CLEVELAND — On a night when CC Sabathia may well have thrown his final meaningful pitches as a Yankee, it seemed a good time to remember that at the beginning, when the Yankees were still recruiting him, still wooing him, it took a fateful collision of eras to help close the deal.

Ultimately, of course, the original $161 million that Sabathia signed for in December 2008 is what slammed the door on the deal. The Yankees paid top dollar and Sabathia was happy to collect. It would be naïve to think otherwise.

But as part of the Yankees’ full-court press that offseason, the Yankees wanted to make sure Sabathia knew the full extent of what could be awaiting him. Yes, Brian Cashman and Joe Girardi, the bosses, pushed hard. So did Derek Jeter, the captain and the face of the club. But there was one other voice the Yankees wanted in the process.

And so at the winter meetings in Las Vegas, Sabathia met with Reggie Jackson, mostly listening star-struck as Jackson made his pitch.

“The Yankees offer something very unique and very special: being compared to the history of the greatest players in the past,” Jackson said at the time. “That’s the standard that, I think, all great players look for. And I think we have an advantage there.”

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“He talked about family,” Jackson said. “He talked about team performance. It was all of the right things that made you respect the character that he has.”

Viewed from 30,000 feet and almost a decade later, it really was a seminal moment in Yankees history. Jackson, after all, was the first real score of the free-agent era. On the day he signed with the Yankees, in the offseason of 1976-77, he’d said of George Steinbrenner’s pursuit: “He hustled me, man.”

And it wasn’t that Jackson was, for many years, clearly the top free-agent signing in Yankees history; it’s when he signed, and what happened after he signed. The Yankees had won their first pennant in a dozen years without him in 1976 as he monitored things from close by in Baltimore. But 1977 would be 15 years since their last title, a drought that, for decades, would have been unfathomable.

We all know the drama Reggie brought with him.

But he also delivered that elusive championship in ’77, hit those three forever home runs in Game 6, and was a key component in the 1978 repeat. Whatever else might have happened, there was never any doubt the Yankees made a superb decision paying him the princely sum of $2.9 million over five years.

Jackson hits his third home run of the game against the Dodgers in Game 6 of the 1977 World Series.MLB Photos via Getty Images

Sabathia was never going to bring anything close to the baggage Reggie did. He was a model teammate in Cleveland and Milwaukee and by all accounts has been exactly that as a Yankee. But when the Yankees pursued Sabathia, they hadn’t won a World Series since 2000. The year before was the first time they had missed the playoffs since before the 1994 players strike.

Say what you will about Yankees expectations, but they are what they are. And they hadn’t been met in a long time. And so the team went on an offseason splurge, signed Sabathia and Mark Teixeira and A.J. Burnett, and a year later they were guzzling champagne and cruising in the Canyon of Heroes.

You could argue if Reggie is the No. 1 free agent, all-time, then Sabathia is at least in the conversation for No. 2. He won 19 games that first year, 59 in his first three years in The Bronx. He was every bit the workhorse the Yankees thought they were getting, and has remained a key part of their emotional core even as his stuff has diminished.

And if Wednesday night was goodbye, he’ll know that he’ll enjoy the kind of send-off Jackson never got, when the ’81 season and postseason became a mess on so many levels. All in all, not a bad recruiting job by Mr. October.